T-Mobile makes huge Starlink announcement as it celebrates another 5G win over AT&T and Verizon
Analysis conducted between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 reveals T-Mobile provides the best speed and experience
T-Mobile’s 5G strategy
Connectivity intelligence company Ookla concluded after conducting an expansive test that T-Mobile has the best mobile network in the US. This achievement was announced by CEO Mike Sievert, COO Srini Gopalan, and Marketing, Strategy, and Products President Mike Katz at an event today.Ookla carried out half a billion real-world tests on millions of devices to find out which network served people best for common use cases and determined that T-Mobile offered better speed and experience than AT&T and Verizon.
Despite raising prices, T-Mobile insists it provides both the best value and the best network.
With T-Mobile, Magenta Status means you can get it all: the best mobile network in America, a world-class experience and the best value in wireless with exclusive benefits like a free year of DashPass, T-Satellite connectivity and other one-of-a-kind perks you won’t find anywhere else. It’s everything you should expect from your wireless provider and more, just for being with us.
—Mike Katz, President, Marketing, Strategy and Products at T-Mobile, June 2025
Primarily, [5G] was going to be a millimeter wave play, which is very high bandwidth with very poor reach. We went all-in on a very different strategy. We said, ‘it’s going to be a mid-band play, and it’s going to be TDD [Time Division Duplex, a way to send and receive data in the same frequency] spectrum in the mid-band that you pair with a very strong low band.’ We were able to get our hands on the best possible spectrum, thanks to merging with Sprint.
—Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile‘s president of technology, June 2025
We have [a] secret that nobody else has, which is a standalone core. A standalone core is a smarter control over all those towers that stand alone,” Ewaldsson said. “Core allows us to combine low-band and mid-band and all our bands to get higher and faster experiences for our customers.
—Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile‘s president of technology, June 2025
T-Mobile’s direct-to-cellular feature will start supporting data services in October
To commemorate the achievement, T-Mobile announced that its T-Satellite service, which is powered by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites and brings connectivity to dead zones, will launch officially on July 23. At the moment, only texting is supported, but the company says that the data service will be activated on October 1 to enable “application experiences on the satellite network.”
The company is working with makers of apps most likely to be used by people traveling to remote locations to provide the best possible experience. AccuWeather, AllTrails, Apple, Google, WhatsApp, and X are all expected to launch satellite-enabled apps.
The company has also announced free DashPass for its customers. It’s a subscription service by delivery company DoorDash that provides perks such as no delivery fee. This benefit will be available starting July 8.
New switch program for AT&T and Verizon customers
Lastly, to make it easy for customers of other carriers to switch to T-Mobile, the company has announced the Easy Upgrade program. T-Mobile claims AT&T and Verizon customers on similar plans will save at least 20 percent if they migrate. T-Mobile will pay off their phone and give them a new iPhone Pro.
Metro by T-Mobile customers haven’t been left out of the celebration. Beginning June 26, customers on Metro’s most popular plans will get more premium data.
There was a time when T-Mobile was the number four carrier in the US, and while customers may not be happy with the company breaking away from its Un-carrier ethos, there is no denying that it has made rapid technological advancements to ensure a top-notch experience for its customers.
